Overview

A quick poll to see what the ship got named after you scoundrels noble rebels stole liberated it. A few of these names I've rendered in languages other than English - there are a lot of people who might bail out on earth, and they don't all speak English. I'm certainly not tied to an of these names and if the crew agrees, name your ship whatever you want.

The highly pared down RPG system we'll be using is this minimalist take on Unisystem that powered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, CJ Carella's Witchcraft and All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Here's everything you need to know: Skill + Stat + ten sided die roll = 9 or more to succeed. The higher the total the more impressive the success. There's a list of outcomes, but since we're not going to actually roll, I'm skipping it. Six stats Strength Intelligence Toughness Agility Willpower Perception 17 points for Stats. and 35 points for skills. Maximum value is 5. There is no skill list because, A: I don't feel like typing one and B: I don't think it would add much. Be reasonable. Things like Vac Suit Repair, Zero G Maneuvering make sense. Each character gets 2 Perks and 2 Drawbacks - these are broader qualities that describe something outside simple skills and stats. Because this is ED, Hung Like A Mule would be a perk, A Drawback might be Easily Frightened or Sensitive to Gravity for someone born in Zero G. Again, I AM NOT REQUIRING ROLLS. If you want to roll, do and if you choose to include it in your post, put it in a Spoiler tag at the bottom of your post. I will read it but my reply describing what happens will be more influenced by your actual post than mechanics. POSTING GUIDELINES I am not a stickler for strict posting order. Sometimes people aren't available, sometimes there's nothing for characters to do: if there's a reason for you to post, do. IF there's not a reason to post but your character has something fun or interesting to say, or you have a cool idea to add, post. IF I present some kind of problem or situation, look at your skills, post what you do and what happens. If there's a hole in the hull and you have Welding 4 or Hull Repair 3 and a 3 Agility, it's pretty likely you fox it (provided you had a welder or hull patch handy) - you don't need me to tell you that your fixed it. Again, be reasonable.

Let's here it, people: who's going to be whom? The roles I'm sure we need are: the captain - although in this dynamic that's probably going to be more of a leader than navy-style rank. Beloved matriarch or patriarch, maybe? pilot engineer medic deckhands navigator, maybe? Or is this part of the pilot's job scientist? The ship is a long way from home and who knows what you might find and not immediately understand negotiator in case you need to conduct business (and I expect you will} If you think there's someone I missed, please suggest away. Unless I hear a strong rejection from the rest of the players, it should be fine. One of the key elements is that everyone is bound by affection - although it kind be indirect - you live inside a very small can of air in infinite vacuum. Getting along will be crucial. Once we get the crew roster together, I'll put a new topic in OOC called Character Sheets, and everyone's character bio will go there. PArt of the bio will be a brief sheet that tells us all what each character is good at. Since this has become an RPG, we'll use a very sparse set of rules, 6 stats: Strength Intelligence Toughness Agility Willpower Perception 17 points for Stats. and 3points for skills. Maximum value is 5. I'm not going to give a skill list, so be good at what you think your character would be good at. We're not going to actually roll for anything, but the basic idea is Skill + Stat + ten sided die roll = 9 or more to succeed. Higher the total the more impressive the success. You can roll if you want to but there's no need to include any mechanics in your posts. Again, you can roll if you want to and if you decide to post any mechanics, put it in a Spoiler tag at the bottom. This is entirely optional. The point is to give you an idea of what the odds are of your character succeeding at tasks are. Any questions, comments or suggestions are welcome, but post them in the Rules thread.

The more I think about it the more I really want to get this thing up and running, but I think that they best way to to that might be to not be a part of the crew but rather work as more of a narrator or GM. That means we need to know who is going to to what on board this ship. I can see we'll need a captain, pilot, engineer, a couple of deckhands, medic and anything else that anyone thinks of, I guess. The core notion I had coming into this was the primary ties between all the characters are romantic - does that appeal at all to anyone?

@Nile 20 I see you joined us after the name change. Welcome. Most of the members are from a few years ago when this club began as a pirate game. There's a half baked plan to run an Expanse game, but it hadn't gotten a lot of traction. There is an ad campaign getting ready to start, so we have the opportunity to build something fun, creative and hopefully interesting. If not The Expanse - which I still hold out secret hope for - what ideas have you got? It needn't be an actual RPG a setting, group of characters or storyline is a place to start.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what to do with this club? Ad campaign goes live in two weeks. I'd like to have something here....

While I work my way through Siobhan and Jan being poor and desperate, does anyone have thoughts about what we want to do to define characters? I used the official Expanse RPG but it may not be the best tool for this kind of play-by-post environment. Cypher? PDQ? Something else?

Jan thumbed open the hatch to the micro slot he and Siobhan shared. The Belter lounged at what looked like an uncomfortable angle, but the station's low gravity was far more normal for her than it was him. He gave her a weak smile - he'd been poor before but not poor in the belt. Poor on Mars meant something different. Here you could feel yourself being a commodity. Siobhan's eyes twinkled as she looked up. "Not long - I'm sure we'll find a can out of here any day now." Jan shrugged, "We better - I made shit today and there's hardly any kibble left." She flicked a notice to his handheld. "Fights tonight." Jan looked down at the announcement. "I dunno - in this gravity, I', not sure I could take you." Siobhan laughed. "You can't take me in any gravity, Jan." The Martian shrugged. She wasn't exactly wrong. "So - you fight?" "Everyone knows me." She pushed off the corner and bounced over to jab him playfully in the side, "It's good you're cute." Jan gave a bitter chuckle. Since leaving Ruby of Karur Jan had felt fairly useless. He barely spoke lang belta and was having a hard time lining up work on the docks. He was as good as any of them, better than most, frankly, but his Martian accent cost him far more jobs than his strength won him. "Doesn't do much good with most beltalowda." "Nope." She agreed in English then grinned broadly and added, "Im does na, mi dear. Amash im does mean kowmang wants fo beat to ass." Jan chugged through the creole slowly and, as he figured it out, shot a glance a Siobhan. "Great - so take a fight that I probably can't win, just because everyone wants to see me get my ass kicked. And what, you bet on them to win." Siobhan looked guilty for a long second before she looked up, "Not at first?" She asked sheepishly.

While @IsabellaRose is on hiatus she's asked me to get things started here. As it is her character who actually owns the ship we'll be taking through the ring, I'd like to run a little prequel on Vesta. My tentative set up for this is Siobhan and Jan have just left their last ship, Ruby of Karur, They had been happy members of that crew for several years and in a long relationship with the pilot. When their lover and the ship's captain were moved to another ship by the owners and replaced with much more abusive and difficult crew, the pair left and have been eking by on the docks of Vesta, hoping for another opportunity. Have they met anyone interesting on the docks - and what kind of shady things are we all doing to get by?

The rough idea at this point is most of the crew know each other already. Siobhan, Jan and the pilot all worked together on their last ship. The current ship is tentatively owned by an affluent Earther (well, her dad's company, technically)who hired the other three on Vesta. Do you think your engineer came with the ship? Is she, maybe, torn between her company paycheck and the promise of a life beyond the Ring? It's a thought - not even a suggestion - just an idea that kinda fits with the ideas that are already bouncing around.

Yes. She got splashed with highly corrosive chemicals in an industrial accident or maybe a skirmish (actually, its sort of both) and the arm couldn’t be saved or regrown. I’m not sure if anyone would want graphic details, but it was bad. She had to do it herself because things were desperate. I’d be willing to RP it. If you’d like, she could tell the story to a newer crewman. It would be a bit of a horror story. Yeah, she has big frizzle energy. She’s going to be pretty neurotic and awkward, but also fiercely loyal and protective of her ship and crew.

Madam Oc reminds me a lot of Miss Frizzle from The Magic School bus... Our freighter probably doesn't have a huge supply of drones - maybe a cargo lifter to move larger containers and a security drone or two to surveil the barge-shuttles. A prosthetic seems completely sensible. Do the others know what happened to your arm?

I wasn’t necessarily seeing her as having the Octo arms. I meant more along how she looks, which I really like. Kind of a messy-hot science lady. I was going to ask about cybernetics, because I know that it’s sort of possible, but not explicitly there. I wouldn’t want full-fledged robots, but advanced drones seem possible. I could also see her having a prosthetic arm that she can maintain with hard work and money. There could be some reason that it couldn’t be regrown. I think that the arm could be used as a weapon, but she would only do this in emergencies, because it’s expensive to fix. It would be an obvious, metal prosthetic.

A woman in her 30's to 40's is fine. Madam Oc's cybernetics aren't really a thing in the Expanse, although I don't see why they couldn't be. Clarissa Mao has implants (granted they're more biological than electro-mechanical) that she can activate to become a deadly combatant, Josep gets regrowth therapy for his severed arm and when the Cant is attacked we hear about prosthetics - so all the underlying technologies exist. @IsabellaRose, do you have any thoughts? I'm inclined to say, "Why not?" I think we need to limit the quantity of servo arms and make any kind of fine manipulation subject to some kind of check, but everything to create that kind of technology exists. The mental capacity to really control them is the hard science fiction limit on it, in my opinion.

Hey there! I watched the first season of the Expanse and liked it. I’m going to want to review the technology in the setting, but I’m not sure how strictly you want to keep to the canon. I can definitely see catching up for it. I’ll have more details later, but I want my character to be a woman in her 30-40’s who is an engineer and can keep together sub-par systems. She’d look like Madame Octopus from the Spiderverse movies. She’s be very protective of the ship and sometimes people would call her Mrs. (Ship’s Name). She doesn’t mind this, really. I can see her being in a polycule, for sure.

OK. It's been 4 years since anyone posted anything here, so I'm going to put a stake in this monster's heart and repurpose it for a new game. This will become an Expanse game. For fans of the show or books, watch this space for a new RP based on the Green Ronin RPG. It will use a very trimmed down resolution mechanic and no experience with it, or any other table top RPG, is neccessary.

"Aye Aye Capt," Talia says and checks her compass to be sure she was still on course. As she put her compass away she thought of the man that she broke and sighs thinking she maybe cursed due to how she'd broken him. As night was falling she met with a helms mate letting them know of their course before laundering off to the Captain's Quarters.

"See we make it afore 'morrow noon is all I ask." The captain replied with a nod. Venus crossed to the ladderwell and turned back to the first mate, "You in the market for a new man, Talia? Break the last one? I told you he looked scrawny." A storm of blonde hair shook off any answer with a smile. "Save it. I want you an Lavule in my quarters at the night watch." She slid down the polished hand rails on her hands. At the bottom she turned into her cabin.

Talia nods in agreement," Aye aye Captian, That we do need. Maybe a few more fellows to board the ship to tame some of these wild women." She gives the Captian a playful wink as she feels a hard breeze blowing behind her heading into the sails giving a ship a hard tug forward. Talia laughs," Looks like the breeze agrees with ya. At this rate we'd be there moon high tonight!"

When Venus returned from the stores, she doubled back and bounded up the ladderwell to the quarterdeck. Talia tended the wheel, and surveyed the deck while the captain and boatswain had been below decks. "We need to make it by tomorrow, love." Venus replied to her first mate. "Lavule and I just checked the rum stores and sundown tomorrow, we'll all be strung from the yards." Venus clapped Talia on the shoulder, "Monster will get us there, you'll see to it. I'll call the crew for a vote when we get there - we need a new quartermaster."

Standing at the helm Talia sighs softly as her golden eyes turns down onto a compass she keeps on hand around her waist. Heading Southwest she turns the helm steering to the left lightly following her instincts goes. Her long hair pulled back into a partial pony tail still showing her length of going down most of her back. Wearing a black corset around her waist emphasizes her c cup breasts beneath a white tunic. Wearing a tight red skirt she sways her hips side to side as she a little she ponders on songs to sing when she saw the captain walking her way. "Bright day Capt," Talia calls out heavy with accent of an ancient language long lost only few who knows. "Kel'ia San jeo gwain Marjia Port sian vika," she says quickly in her tongue then she quickly switches to English after realizing she was speaking the wrong language. "We'll be in Marjia's Port in a few days time. Given the wind is on our side."

Venus huffed, "Jump ship? You'd be a fool not to, Cassandra Lavule. You with a ship and crew of your own? Me'n the mate with Monster - we'd be the masters of the seas. Least until they sent a fleet for us." She wasn't so much afraid as sort of hopeful. Lavule was capable and attractive. Easier to avail herself of that latter fact as equals. Bad mojo to dally with the crew - well, openly, anyway." Venus turned a smiling face back on the boatswain, "I expect the lads and lasses will go buck wild and we'll be apologizing to Marjia. I had intended to see what I could do about weaseling a cabin boy out of the filthy old wench." she said with a wink. "I'll share him with you as long as your one of my crew, eh?" She swung nimbly under the stay and cocked her head toward the mainmast as she started toward the main deck, "Let's have a look at the rum stores and see how much work you have, shall we?"